A young man stands in front of a church congregation and gives his confirmation. In the audience a proud mother and father sit and watch their son. It’s in this moment that they discover, along with the rest of the congregation, a special gift young Craig Prindle was born with: the gift of public announcing.
The way Craig’s voice carries and the impact it makes on those around him came as a sort of surprise. Craig’s mother, Cyndi Prindle, said that he was the quietest of her three boys, but that when he got up in front of the church congregation in eighth grade to give his address, she knew he had something special.
“Everyone who heard him at his age couldn’t believe his voice,” Cyndi said.
After Craig discovered his talent, he took to implementing and fine tuning it. His mother said that although they encouraged him, he found his own way and was self-driven.
He attended Reitz High School in Evansville and eventually began calling Reitz High School football games.
Craig said he even called some Evansville Otter games for a little while. After he started calling games he had a short stint at Fox News 7 gave him a great amount of more experience.
Later, Craig enrolled at USI where he majored in broadcasting and made an eventual switch to public relations.
Craig said it was after the switch that he was made aware of the opportunity to announce games at the Physical Activities Center.
He started calling games for the women’s volleyball games at the PAC. Shortly after, in 2006, a spot happened to open up to call the men’s and women’s basketball games, and he took it.
In September of 2009, Craig married his wife Christa, who is a biology earth space teacher at Central High school. They dated for 10 months before they were married.
“It wasn’t that long, but we love each other and things are great,” Christa said. They met through mutual friends while working at Hacienda.
Christa said she loves her husband’s side project. She gets to sit up front with him and has, “the best seat in the house.”
Now at the age of 25 and well into public announcing, Craig splits the rest of his time among other things as well. He has a full time job at the West Side Hacienda as a cook.
To add to that, he is currently enrolled at USI with hopes of becoming a teacher. He will be student teaching soon and eventually wants to teach middle school.
Craig has become as much a part of the basketball games to the crowd as the teams have. Cindy said if her son ever misses a game that his grandparents will hear about it.
“Craig’s grandparents friends have season tickets to the games,” Cyndi said. “If he misses a game, boosters and fans will come up to them when they are out and ask where he was.”
The community supports Craig and seems to know him well, Cyndi said. Whenever she and Kevin, her husband, are out, they usually get people coming up to them asking how Craig is doing.
“He makes us very proud. He knows what he wants and has his head on straight,” Cyndi said. “He’s always been a driven man and what he is doing right now is a positive thing.”
